Israel did not aim to kill civilians

The head of a United Nations panel that investigated Israel’s invasion of Gaza two years ago has retracted the central and most explosive assertion of the report – that Israel purposely killed Palestinian civilians there.

Richard Goldstone, an esteemed South African jurist who led a panel of experts that examined the Gaza War, wrote in an opinion article in The Washington Post that Israeli investigations into the conflict “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy".

“If I had known then what I know now," he wrote, “the Goldstone report would have been a different document."

His article followed a report submitted two weeks ago by a committee of independent experts headed by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis, which stated Hamas had no internal investigation of its conduct and Israel investigated more than 400 accusations of misconduct.

Mr Goldstone’s article fell like a bomb in Israel, where many considered the 2009 publication of the Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (Goldstone report) as one of the most harmful events in recent years. It was viewed as offering spurious justification for accusations that Israelis considered to be part of a campaign to delegitimise the state and label it as a war criminal.

On Saturday night, Mr Netanyahu called for the UN to retract the Goldstone report entirely. “Everything we said has proven to be true," he said. “Israel did not intentionally harm civilians. Its institutions and investigative bodies are worthy, while Hamas intentionally fired upon innocent civilians and did not examine anything."

Mr Goldstone’s report documented numerous examples of mistreatment of Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers. He did not back away from those findings in his article.

As many as 1400 Gazans were killed during the three-week offensive in 2008-09, including hundreds of civilians. Israel carried out the campaign after years of rocket fire by Palestinian militants in Gaza against southern Israel.